Blog:Bring me sunshine

Well, thanks to French air traffic controllers working to rule yesterday (24 June), I managed to see a lot more of Bilbao's airport than I was bargaining for - a further three hours in fact.

The ANE Congress over, I made my way back to the airport - replete with stunning, modernist architecture that echoes the city's extraordinary collection of new buildings highlighted of course by the mass of bent steel that is the Guggenheim Museum.

The taxi driver - who clearly thought he had a thwarted Formula 1 career - decided to play - in order - The Eagles, Smokey Robinson and Grandmaster Flash in a riot of '80s memories and deposited me in a record-breaking hotel-to-airport time.

And thanks to French ATC I had a bit of time to mull the Congress itself and an extremely useful get-together of the great and the good it was - and if Spyker and now Saab CEO Victor Muller finds himself not in the car business he'd certainly make a decent stand-up.

It constantly amazes me how extraordinarily fluent Dutch people are in English, but Muller takes it to a whole new level. Perhaps he'd better start learning Swedish - I bet he'd be a natural.

And his constant disappearing behind the curtain to engage with the unfortunate technicians who were struggling to show the Saab video was - for those with knowledge of British comedy - pure Morecambe and Wise. The man's born for the stage.

Given the startling complexity of obtaining a journalist visa for China - the code 'J2' is now indelibly stamped on my mind - it was with some surprise how swiftly I managed to sail through airport im...